Month: November 2014

Working more, earning less

by digby

With all the talk of inequality, this comment from Nick Hanauer strikes me as one of the more important insights:

If you’re in the American middle class—or what’s left of it—here’s how you probably feel. You feel like you’re struggling harder than your parents did, working longer hours than ever before, and yet falling further and further behind. The reason you feel this way is because most of you are—falling further behind, that is. Adjusted for inflation, average salaries have actually dropped since the early 1970s, while hours for full-time workers have steadily climbed.

Meanwhile, a handful of wealthy capitalists like me are growing wealthy beyond our parents’ wildest dreams, in large part because we’re able to take advantage of your misfortune.

So what’s changed since the 1960s and ’70s? Overtime pay, in part. Your parents got a lot of it, and you don’t. And it turns out that fair overtime standards are to the middle class what the minimum wage is to low-income workers: not everything, but an indispensable labor protection that is absolutely essential to creating a broad and thriving middle class. In 1975, more than 65 percent of salaried American workers earned time-and-a-half pay for every hour worked over 40 hours a week. Not because capitalists back then were more generous, but because it was the law. It still is the law, except that the value of the threshold for overtime pay—the salary level at which employers are required to pay overtime—has been allowed to erode to less than the poverty line for a family of four today. Only workers earning an annual income of under $23,660 qualify for mandatory overtime. You know many people like that? Probably not. By 2013, just 11 percent of salaried workers qualified for overtime pay, according to a report published by the Economic Policy Institute. And so business owners like me have been able to make the other 89 percent of you work unlimited overtime hours for no additional pay at all.

I watched the phenomenon of “more work, less pay” grow over the course of my so-called career. It took many forms, from re-classification of workers to non-contract and “executive” to avoid paying paying overtime to subtle coercion from the boss implying that you won’t get ahead if you put in for overtime pay. “Productivity” became the watchword which, in the business world, just means squeezing more work out of fewer people.

It’s so pervasive that they don’t even think about what they’re saying when they run ads like this:

People who “work through” their lunch don’t get paid for that time.

Read the whole piece. Hanauer is one of the most interesting rich guys around.

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Not gonna go there with Uber

by Tom Sullivan

We’ll spare you the easy Uber jokes and get right to it. The ridesharing service is not having a good week after a couple of Buzzfeed articles hit social media. It seems Uber executives might like to surveil both customers and critics. The WaPo has this:

The controversy stemmed from remarks by Uber Senior Vice President Emil Michael on Friday night as he spoke of his desire to spend $1 million to dig up information on “your personal lives, your families,” referring to journalists who write critically about the company, according to a report published Monday night by Buzzfeed. The same story said a different Uber executive once had examined the private travel records of a Buzzfeed reporter during an e-mail exchange about an article without seeking permission to access the data.

That combination of vindictiveness and willingness to tap into user information provoked outrage Tuesday on social-media sites, spawning the hashtag “#ubergate” on Twitter. Critics recounted a series of Uber privacy missteps, including a 2012 blog post in which a company official analyzed anonymous ridership data in Washington and several other cities in an attempt to determine the frequency of overnight sexual liaisons by customers — which Uber dubbed “Rides of Glory.”

Our daily interaction with tech companies means “we have never been more extortable,” according Chris Hoofnagle, a UC Berkeley law professor specializing in online privacy.

In an earlier Buzzfeed article, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick made it seem Obamacare was an enabler for services such as his. Jonathan Chait writes:

This weekend, Uber CEO Travis Kalanick appeared at a dinner in New York and, in a few words, fatally undercut the premise of the Republican Party’s economic philosophy. Kalanick told reporters that Obamacare had been a crucial element in his firm’s success. “It’s huge,” he said, according to BuzzFeed. “The democratization of those types of benefits allow people to have more flexible ways to make a living. They don’t have to be working for The Man.”

The destructive power of this blunt statement works in two ways. The first, of course, is that it rebuts the Republican indictment of Obamacare, opposition to which is a matter of holy writ within the party. Of all the grounds for Republican hatred of Obamacare, the most deeply held is the belief that it amounts to onerous regulation that holds back capitalistic dynamism. That belief is not only foundational on the right, but nebulous enough that, even as conservative predictions about Obamacare’s cost and functionality obviously fail, the deeper suspicion that it is invisibly rotting away the foundations of capitalism can linger without any real evidence.

Anyway, that’s management’s pitch, if not the Republicans’, but no cause for celebration. How is that benign-sounding “sharing economy” working for Uber’s independent contractors (the company prefers partner-drivers)? “It’s like owning my own business; I love it,” says one. Except that’s a lie drivers feel they must tell or be “deactivated” for low customer ratings:

Gabriele Lopez, an LA Uber driver, also lies. “We just sit there and smile, and tell everyone that the job’s awesome, because that’s what they want to hear,” said Lopez, who’s been driving for UberX, the company’s low-end car service, since it launched last summer.

In fact, if you ask Uber drivers off the clock what they think of the company, it often gets ugly fast. “Uber’s like an exploiting pimp,” said Arman, an Uber driver in LA who asked me to withhold his last name out of fear of retribution. “Uber takes 20 percent of my earnings, and they treat me like shit — they cut prices whenever they want. They can deactivate me whenever they feel like it, and if I complain, they tell me to fuck off.”

A sweet bunch. Uber recently hired Obama campaign guru, David Plouffe, “king of dishing out liberal kool-aid,” to help with marketing. In another race to the bottom, it seems everyone from left to right is being played by this democratized, naked capitalism. It’s a heads we win, tails you lose business model. Just the way they like it.

God he’s loathsome

by digby

… in every possible way:

[Chris] Christie took the opportunity to jump in bed with Big Pork by pledging to veto a bill that would ban the use of gestation crates on New Jersey pig farms.

The Republican governor, who traditionally backs off from declaring how he’ll act on pending legislation when asked by reporters, made his intentions clear on a pig gestation crate bill when asked last month about it during a visit to Northwest Iowa, according to a pork producer.

“He indicated to us that he was going to veto the bill,” said Bill Tentinger, an Iowa pork producer and former president of the Iowa Pork Producers Association.

This is the second attempt by New Jersey lawmakers to ban gestation crates, which hold pregnant sows in rigid positions for months on end and are so cruel that noted animal rights activists McDonald’s and Burger King don’t want their pork suppliers using them.

Man, that’s bad.

If he wins the nomination and/or (God forbid) the presidency, I honestly don’t think I could take it. He’s everything horrible.

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How ISIS “builds its brand”

by digby

I don’t think I’ve ever seen soulless corporate jargon applied to torture and mayhem before but why not?

ISIS has produced a large catalogue of media documenting its own atrocities. Last June, for instance, ISIS released photographs of its fighters committing a massacre of captured Iraqi army troops. In the gruesome images, approximately 1700 Shia Iraqi soldiers are gunned down en masse by black-clad ISIS figures. According to a recent UN report, ISIS has released other videos of mass executions, including one showing the murder of a group of Syrian government soldiers, and one of fighting-age men from the al Sheitat tribe. The videos of the murders of five western hostages, including, most recently, Kassig, are part of that broader media strategy.

ISIS forces civilians, including children, to watch the videos. For instance, the UN report found that in Raqqah city, ISIS gathered children for screenings of mass execution videos. In Aleppo, ISIS forced a group of 153 kidnapped Kurdish teenagers to watch videos of beheadings and attacks over a five-month period. ISIS also forces civilians to attend public executions, and publicly displays the corpses of its victims. That strategy is designed to instill terror in the civilian population of the areas ISIS controls, in order to coerce them into cooperating with the group’s demands.

This is apparently their business plan to attract customers and “build its brand”:

ISIS’s media presence is also a way for the organization to build its brand. ISIS is struggling to claim the mantle of the global jihadist movement, and it’s in competition with groups like al Qaeda for that status. Publicizing its brutality is a way to demonstrate its power and ruthlessness. The executions of Western hostages heighten that effect, presenting ISIS as the main opponent of Western imperialism and elevating the group’s status in comparison to other jihadi organizations. That matters because ISIS is competing against other groups to attract recruits and funding.

I don’t think they’re exactly building a brand: they’re just terrorizing a population into compliance. That can be very effective. For a while.  Eventually it … isn’t.

The one thing I would hope America and Europe don’t do is delude itself into this kind of thinking:

[W]hen they look up and see an RAF, Danish, or American bomber coming in, they feel precisely as you and I would feel. That sight must seem like the answer to a prayer, a prayer that can be expressed in every faith: “Save my family, save my home, save my village, save me, from this evil.”
[…]

What all of these various hate groups have in common is a disdain for, and a wish to destroy, our Western way of life.

And someone needs to tell them that the meeting has already been held. It was decided, democratically, long ago – and by the way through great and heroic sacrifice – that our societies will be governed by Western values and Western laws.

Among those values are openness and tolerance. But to every extremist, it has to be made clear: we will not allow you to exploit our tolerance, so that you can import your intolerance. We will not let you destroy our peace with your violent ideas. If you expect to live among us, and yet plan against us, to receive the protections and comforts of a free society, while showing none of its virtues or graces, then you can have our answer now: No, not on our watch!

You will live by exactly the standards that the rest of us live by. And if that comes as jarring news: then welcome to civilization.

The Superhero Savior Daddy syndrome is not a solution. If we want to help ISIS we’ll have more western leaders making speeches like that one from Rick Perry in London.

They are not space aliens with supernatural powers. Neither are we. They are a violent gang using medieval methods to frighten the population into submission. That’s horrible enough. 

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QOTD: Gun nut #1

by digby

Gun Owners of America’s Larry Pratt on President Obama:

“He clearly doesn’t like the fact that the American people can own guns because we might just want to use them to keep people like him from becoming tyrants.”

Good thing we’ve never had any presidents assassinated or someone might get the wrong idea.

I wonder what Ronald Reagan would think about that?

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Jobs, jobs jobs

by digby

Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

“The president is the president; we can’t control him. Good, bad or indifferent. I think the Democratic Caucus, we can be loyal to the president, we can be part of the team, which we should to the best of our ability. But we need to focus more on middle-class issues,” said Rep. Michael Capuano of Massachusetts. “We now have lost three elections in a row based on those themes [health care, immigration, minimum wage, pay equity for women] — all of which I agree with, all of which I can run on in my district, they’re fine — but middle-class Americans are not hearing that message. When was the last time the Democratic Caucus as a caucus — not individually — really talked about jobs? For me, we don’t do that enough.”

Other Democrats, though, believe it’s a mistake to adopt a more centrist message or to try to run away from Obama.

A couple of things. First, since when are the issues of minimum wage and pay equity for women not about jobs? I don’t think they relate to leisure time activity do you? Evidently, when he says “jobs” he means high wage jobs for men. Which is fine. They do need high wage jobs. So do women. So does everyone. The working poor have “jobs” as do women who are paid less than men. Both of those groups would like “jobs” — that pay more.

Second, (and this isn’t Capuano’s fault, it’s Politico’s) since when is the issue of jobs exclusively “centrist?” I don’t think it is. Good There’s a reason why labor unions gather on the left of the Democratic Party and it isn’t because they don’t care about good paying jobs. In fact, the centrist position is to care about “business” not jobs which requires lowering of regulation and taxes to make the rich get richer so they’ll spend more money and which will create more jobs. Also too: the deficit.

In any case it’s a little bit unfair to call it centrist simply because everyone “talks about” jobs on all sides of the ideological spectrum. The question is what to do about it. Liberals at least have some specifics on the table about pay equity, minimum wage, infrastructure etc that would directly help workers. Centrists and conservatives on the the other hand just keep blathering on about taxes and “incentives” and regulations even though the last 30 years have shown that none of that actually helps “jobs.” In fact, we’re watching the result of all that fetishizing of business destroy the middle class.

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It’s always something

by digby

There will always be a reason for timorous Democrats to demand the President not hit the GOP hornet’s nest. They always think that if only they don’t do anything to make them mad they’ll survive. They demanded that the president not issue his promised immigration Executive Order until after the election so vulnerable Democrats might be able to keep their seats. How did that work out for them?

Nonetheless, here we go again:

President Obama has a tough decision to make on the timing of an executive order to freeze deportations of illegal immigrants.

Senate Democrats want him to wait to give them time to pass an omnibus spending bill and other legislative priorities in the lame-duck session that is just now ramping up.
[…]

But Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, which has jurisdiction of the immigration enforcement agencies that would be affected, said Obama should wait until next year.

“If I were the president, what I’d say to the Congress — House, Senate, Democrat or Republican — I’m going to give you a little bit of time and in the new Congress expect you to do something,” he said.

Surely, they’ll pass a wonderful bill if only the president agrees not to do what he’s promised to do. Because the Republicans are very sincere.

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Washington Post creates a new boogeyman

by digby

The Washington Post editorial board is very worried about what President Ted Cruz might do if President Barack Obama shows him how to use executive power:

DEMOCRATS URGING President Obama to “go big” in his executive order on immigration might pause to consider the following scenario:

It is 2017. Newly elected President Ted Cruz (R) insists he has won a mandate to repeal Obamacare. The Senate, narrowly back in Democratic hands, disagrees. Mr. Cruz instructs the Internal Revenue Service not to collect a fine from anyone who opts out of the individual mandate to buy health insurance, thereby neutering a key element of the program. It is a matter of prosecutorial discretion, Mr. Cruz explains; tax cheats are defrauding the government of billions, and he wants the IRS to concentrate on them. Of course, he is willing to modify his order as soon as Congress agrees to fix what he considers a “broken” health system.

That is not a perfect analogy to Mr. Obama’s proposed action on immigration. But it captures the unilateral spirit that Mr. Obama seems to have embraced since Republicans swept to victory in the midterm elections.

Right. Never mind the previous Republican presidents who used executive powers to enable immigrants to stay in the country. Or the Republican presidents who ordered stuff like torture and warrantless surveillance in secret. Surely President Cruz would never think of doing anything like that if Obama agrees not to follow through on his promise.

Villagers …
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“Pants Up, Don’t Loot”

by digby

There’s always someone who can’t help but give the game away. Like the fine fellow who raised the money to buy a billboard in Ferguson that says “Pants up, Don’t loot”. He evidently thinks he’s very clever.

This crowdfunding campaign is for the purchase of a billboard in the Ferguson, MO area. The billboard will display black text on a white background with the text “#PantsUPDontLoot”. After some initial confusion we are working with other, undisclosed companies in the area that are willing to create and display this image. The funds collected from this campaign will be used to purchase this billboard for as long as possible. Lamar originally quoted us ~$2,500 for 1 month but others have come in under that amount. Whatever funds we receive will go directly to keeping the billboard campaign up as long as possible. If we come to an agreement with a company and can fund it for 3 months, 5 months, 7 months…, we will.

I know from experience that billboard companies will often refuse to run political messages. Blue America has been shut out of quite a few places because they don’t want to be controversial or the owners are conservative. It will be interesting to see if the Ferguson billboard companie agree to run this.

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My well doesn’t want your fracking waste water
by Tom Sullivan

Fracking continues to gain in unpopularity. During the recent election, candidates and campaigners told me one sure way to flip voters from the opposition — especially rural voters — was to inform them the Republican supported fracking.

There’s trouble at t’drill in Bakersfield, CA. “Errors were made.” (video at KNTV link):

State officials allowed oil and gas companies to pump nearly three billion gallons of waste water into underground aquifers that could have been used for drinking water or irrigation.

Those aquifers are supposed to be off-limits to that kind of activity, protected by the EPA.

Nah. Never happen where you live, right?

“This is something that is going to slowly contaminate everything we know around here,” said fourth- generation Kern County almond grower Tom Frantz, who lives down the road from several of the injection wells in question.

According to state records, as many as 40 water supply wells, including domestic drinking wells, are located within one mile of a single well that’s been injecting into non-exempt aquifers.

Kern County community organizer Juan Flores told reporters, “No one from this community will drink from the water from out of their well. The people are worried. They’re scared.”

But there’s nothing to see here, little people:

The trade association that represents many of California’s oil and gas companies says the water-injection is a “paperwork issue.” In a statement issued to NBC Bay Area, Western States Petroleum Association spokesman Tupper Hull said “there has never been a bona vide claim or evidence presented that the paperwork confusion resulted in any contamination of drinking supplies near the disputed injection wells.”

However, state officials tested 8 water supply wells within a one-mile radius of some of those wells.
Four water samples came back with higher than allowable levels of nitrate, arsenic, and thallium.
Those same chemicals are used by the oil and gas industry in the hydraulic fracturing process and can be found in oil recovery waste-water.

“We are still comparing the testing of what was the injection water to what is the tested water that came out of these wells to find out if they were background levels or whether that’s the result of oil and gas operation, but so far it’s looking like it’s background,” said James Marshall from the California Department of Conservation.

Marshall acknowledged that those chemicals could have come from oil extraction, and not necessarily wastewater disposal.

I know, right? What a relief.